Hey, did you guys know there's an election coming soon? I know, it's been a pretty low-profile thing, but it's true. Of course, we want to be a well-informed electorate, right? One source of information that should probably be watched to achieve that goal is the White House. Today, the administration of the most powerful office in the country revealed a newly-designed app that will allow mobile users to watch live presidential events, search its stable of blog posts, videos, and press releases, and in a forward-thinking move, makes all this content available on tablets.

In a rather surprising move from the political arena as a whole (though not unheard of, given the current President's affinity for modern technology), the White House app is actually extremely well designed. It follows the Android Style Guide where it needs to, and even includes the increasingly-common sidebar navigation element. The nicest touch of all is that you can even swipe from the left side of the screen to the right to open the sidebar. This is something that even the official Google+ app doesn't do.

Personal politics aside (please, for the love of Google, let the comments be civil), it's very encouraging to see the White House take mobile information seriously, and at least lay the groundwork for future administrations. As Americans become more and more connected, and information intake becomes increasingly mobile, having mobile and social platforms in place and regularly developed sets a good precedent*.

Update: Oh, how did I forget this. The White House app is open source! If you want to fiddle with it, here's the github link.